Bob Withers wanted to take off a few pounds, so he joined Weight Watchers.
The Dallas-based programmer quickly discovered the diet's main problem:
It's fiendishly complicated. To succeed, members must obsessively log the
"point" value of every hamburger, apple, and
celery stick they consume.

Withers - who didn't want to do all that counting - whipped up WWCalc,
a Palm OS-based app that automates the tracking process. Just enter what
you've eaten,
and it assigns the points and adds them up. He put the software on PalmGear.com
last December - and observed with delight
as nearly 17,000 other WW dieters flocked to download it for free.

Then came the inevitable cease-and-desist letter. Because WW's point system
is copyrighted, Withers was told he had
to take his software offline. He offered to give it to the company for
free, but no dice. Withers suspects that WW, which declined to comment,
didn't want competition for
its own, $12.95-a-month online tracking tool. "They came off as pretty
moneygrubbing," he complains.

His revenge is sweet: WWCalc has become an illicit pass-around hit among
dieters, who email and beam it to one another - a viral phenomenon Weight
Watchers can't quash. As for Withers?
He's lost 50 pounds.